Editorial | Epidemic the last straw for bookshop
- Swindon Book Company Ltd has been part of Hong Kong’s history for more than a century, but the impact of Covid-19 on top of last year’s social unrest has forced the close of its Tsim Sha Tsui store
With the online trade having hollowed out the high-street market for physical books, the viability of English bookshops in expensive retail localities has long been precarious. To book lovers, the survivors are like endangered living heritage. It does not take much to push them over the edge.
The coronavirus epidemic and the antisocial countermeasures to protect our health have severely tested more resilient retail sectors. So it is no surprise that on top of the business dampener of social unrest, it has proved the last straw for Hong Kong’s oldest bookshop.
Swindon Book Company Ltd, a family-owned concern founded in 1918, is moving its operations online from its location in Tsim Sha Tsui. Generations of Hongkongers have grown up with the English bookshop, with its signature marble shopfront and the golden fonts of its name surviving world wars and the city’s boom and bust.
It has been part of Hong Kong’s history for more than a century, even as a backdrop in films – another faded feature of the city’s cultural history. Paradoxically, even the city’s popular annual book fair, which showcases the industry to book lovers and many Hongkongers alike, ultimately promoted the offerings of bookshops’ online competitors.
This year’s fair, too, succumbed to the virus, being postponed because of the difficulty in implementing anti-infection measures.